A progressive look at US political, foreign policy, social, law and war-and-peace issues through the eyes of a slightly deranged ex-pat Yank writing from Canada.
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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Earlier today, I wrote that the McCain campaign plans to turn ugly, pock-marked and nasty. "We're going to 'Willie Horton' Obama," I was told by a campaign insider.

But this is more than nasty: The campaign is becoming dangerous.

Twice yesterday and again today, when McCain was giving a speech and asked the rhetorical question, "Who is Obama?" someone in the crowd shouted back "terrorist" followed by someone else yelling "kill him," to hearty and approving applause. The same threats echoed during Palin speeches since Sunday, as well. The videos are all over YouTube.

Threatening the life of a presidential candidate is a federal offense and with so many police and Secret Service agents present, why wasn't anyone arrested? When a crazy woman like Ann Coulter recommended that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be shot, people rose in outrage but right wingnuts laughed it off, saying Democrats don't have a sense of humour. Some joke!

When McCain and Palin use silence to give tacit approval to suggestions from supporters that their opponent should be shot, then they are tacitly signalling that it'd be alright for someone to take a pot shot.

Are we supposed to laugh it all off? I've lived through enough political assassinations, and attempted assassinations, for one lifetime, thank you.

This is starting to remind me of Hitler's rallies during the last days of the Weimer Republic in Germany during the 1930s. There, politicians and ordinary people alike were killed after supporters took up their leader's call to action.

If you read my previous piece, We’re Going To ‘Willie Horton’ Obama, you know why this song written by The Byrds and sung by Bruce Springsteen is so appropriate today. A hat tip to www.euddoggwyn.blogspot.com for posting the video and bringing it to my attention.

First, on Sunday, a McCain campaign spokesman told reporters that if they didn’t “turn the page on the economy, we lose.” Now, my source at McCain headquarters is laying out Straight Talkin’ John’s hideous strategy for the last 28 days of the campaign.

“We’re going to ‘Willie Horton’ Obama,” he told me early this morning by phone. “It could work.”

For those too young or too old to remember the Michael Dukakis-George H. W. Bush campaign in 1988, the Democrat emerged from his convention with a 17% Gallup Poll lead. Perhaps the main reason his lead dissipated was an outrageous TV ad linking Governor Dukakis to a prisoner who committed rape during a weekend furlough. The commercial included an threatening photo of an ominous looking Willie Horton, an African-American convict.

“Wait,” I reply. “What happened to all of those statements by McCain preserved on YouTube of McCain (www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbcuqfaroe4) insisting he would only run a clean campaign? No negative ads. No ‘Willie Horton’ smears?” Even his wife Cindy is captured telling a TV interviewer their side won’t engage in negative attacks.

There is a long pause on the line.

“John said that before (Steve) Schmidt grabbed running the campaign away from Rick Davis,” comes what I realize is a self-evident answer. Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé and veteran of Bush 43’s 2004 campaign, took over as McCain’s campaign director in July at the insistence of GOP bigwigs.

“Schmidt had Palin test drive the line this weekend and overnight internals showed it went over big with the base,” is the explanation. “The question is will it have the same impact on independents and undecideds?”

Palin’s attack line tries linking Obama to William Ayers, a 1960s-era member of the radical group Weather Underground. Ayers, now a respected education teacher, denounced his own involvement in the organization decades ago and, in the 1990s, served briefly on a charity board with Obama.

She used the “Obama’s palin’ around with terrorists” line again on Monday, nearly causing Keith Olbermann’s head to explode (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#27057346) as he tore her a new one in a Special Comment segment Monday night.

That the hate-and-smear campaign might work seems to be the only criteria used by the McCain campaign.

“No one knew that Dukakis had nothing to do with Willie Horton,” my contact inside the McCain campaign tells me, “or that the state’s policy of granting weekend passes to prisoners nearing the end of their term was established by the parole board, not the governor’s office,” my source tells me. “But it cost him the election.”

In an article this morning at Truthout.org, political columnist Norman Solomon cautions Democrats that it might just work.

Young trial lawyers are taught that if the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts and the law are against you, pound the table.

“All we have left is pounding the table,” the McCain staffer, a lawyer by trade, confesses.

Charley James

About Me

If you were born in post-war Milwaukee, you were born a Democrat. So I gravitated naturally to liberal politics, first as journalist and then an activist. I've been writing since I was eight years old and, after working far too long in newsrooms - local newspapers, major market television and radio stations, assistant editor of a major business newsweekly - I've spent much of the past decade as an independent investigtative jouralist. Media outlets have published, cited or quoted me including The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Financial Post, TruthOut, LA Progressive, UK Progressive, TVO, PBS and BBC News. When not covering and writing about politics, I scribble out random thoughts on the peculiarites of modern times.